In the olden days, religion and politics went
hand in hand. The church either ran
the land or had a
strangle hold on the people. If the church thought there was one way to
do something, one
had to do as the church requested or suffer great penalty. To go
against the
church was to go against God, and that meant death. The king was supposed
to be chosen by
God to rule the people in the way he commanded. The king was the
closest thing to
God on earth.
Monarchs generally ruled
hand in hand with the church.
As the monarchy's
rein started to come to an end, the church's tight grip on the citizens
slowly started to
loosen. With the implication of democracy, the church lost all real
power to make
laws and actually govern the people. The church still held power over
peoples' morals,
but without the monarchy's to enforce it the church's found their power
decreasing. In
Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, the government and the church
are
interchangeable. The government is what used to be called the church, they have
come together to
become one unit of power. The power of a modern day government
with all the
knowledge and weapons combined with the fanaticism of a medieval based
church create a
dictatorship like none other. The novel deals with the treatment of
children harshly
for a society which views children as their last hope, their most valuable
commodity.
Children are taken away from their homes to be given to the privileged, and
women are forced
to give birth to babies they can not keep. The society of Gilead takes
the views of a
traditional religious monarchy and enforces them with modern day power.
In the novel The Handmaid's Tale, there is a
place called the "Red Center", which
is a training
facility. When one thinks of a training facility they tend to invision a
military
base with young
soldiers learning what they need to know to survive. Atwood's "Red
Center" is
very similar to this type of facility; it has soldiers inside the facility and
people
are being taught
how to survive. Women in the "Red Center" are being taught how to
become submissive
to the new order. The "Red Center" is the place they take women
who they believe
are prime child bearers, and the women are taught how to become
Handmaids. A
Handmaid is a woman who goes into a home, usually of a high ranking
official, to get
pregnant because in this age of pollution and death, may people are unable
to procreate. The
Handmaids are sent to live in the homes and take the name of the male
in the household,
where their goal is to become pregnant. If she does not within three
terms in three
separate houses she is no longer considered "helpful" to society and
may
be sent away to
the colonies to live out the rest of her life cleaning up radioactive waste.
In modern times when a couple is not able to
have children and is not eligible for
adoption, one
possible choice is the use of a surrogate mother. A surrogate mother is
when the husbands
sperm is injected into another fertile female, who then gives birth to
the baby and
gives the it to the couple. This practice is not all that common but still can
be found
happening in various places around the world. The use of a surrogate mother
often leaves
emotional scars for the biological mother and can possibly end up in the
courts if the she
changes her mind, and wishes to keep the child.
Children in Giliead are a valuable commodity.
Custody of a child depends not on
birth rights, but
on power and status of an individual. In the early years of Gilead, a child
could have easily been taken away from a family and
given to a powerful commander or
anyone of high
status. As the years went by, the under class were simply not able to have
any children, the
right reserved for only the rich and powerful. Any woman who had the
ability to have
children were taken away from there homes and forced to become
Handmaids for the
elite. The public was told that it was all for the good of the society,
and if anyone
resisted, they were delt with quickly and harshly. This was no longer a
democracy.
Families were torn apart with no hope for reconcile. Custody depended on
status only.
In our society Custody is almost always given to
the birth parents. Sometimes
custody can be
taken away from a couple if they have
proven themselves unfit parents.
Custody can be
given to the state or it can be given to other family members if they apply
for it. Each
year, cases of children being taken out of the homes of their unfit parents and
being given to
there grandparents or other such relatives increases. As social conditions
and the ability
for parents to remain fit decrease, the rate of grandparents applying for
custody of their
grandchildren increases.
The political structure of Gilead is based
around the church. The laws are devised
through religion
and democracy is no longer valid.
Society has reverted back to the
medieval days
when the church and the monarchy ruled hand in hand and where a
minuscule upper
class controlled a huge lower class. The values of Gilead have reverted
back to a holy
conservative view, where men have a higher status than women and where
classes are very
distinct.
In modern day North America, the liberal views
of the sixties and seventies are
being shot down
with mass aggression, as every major United States President candidate
since 1988 has
used traditional family values as there main platform in running for
office.
Politicians like Dan Quale are condemning the single parent household and
speaking out
against such single parent role models such as Television's Murphy Brown.
In Canada, three
members of Preston Manning's Reform party were kicked out of the
caucus for
speaking out against homosexual rights and supporting the more traditional
view of strait
only marriages. As more and more politicians use traditional values of the
fifties as a
platform to get elected into office, more and more liberals get fed up with the
political system
because they feel that there is no candidate that expresses their opinions.
Because most
politicians feel that most of the voting population is conservative, they try
to increase their
chances of getting elected by trying to appeal to the conservative
majority. This
causes a lack of options for voters if the candidates have basically the
same stance on
the issues.
The common threads between Gilead and our own
society are surprising similar if
one looks closely
enough. The possibility of things common in our every day society
taken out of
control by fanatics is not all that hard to comprehend. It is possible that the
chain of events
that lead a society to Gilead has already started to happen. The make
believe future
world of Gilead is just that, make believe, but the possibility of extremists
taking us to a
similar point is very real. Incidents like the Oklahoma bombing, the stand
off in Idaho with
right wing radicals, and the Unibomber should show us that people with
radical ideas are
willing to use force to get their views out to the public. Such shows of
force and extreme
ideas are exactly how the society of Gilead was founded.
The Handmaid's
Tale
Margaret Atwood
(Toronto: Seal
Books, 1985)
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